122
Breaking
"Here let me waltzing pass, in this Ball of the Vortices, Anarchie of the Thunders! Did not the great Corot call it translation in a chariot of flame? But this is gaudier than that! Redder than that! This is a jaunting on the scoriac tempests and reeling bullions of hell! It is baptism in a sun!" – M. P. Shiel, "Vaila"
The Chosen Children and Anubimon remained motionless, stricken. They didn't notice, but in the distant shadows Sato Katsu had paused at one of the room's exits and turned to gaze back at the aftermath of the Dark Man's interruption. The Dark Man himself dropped his hands and clasped them behind his back, smiling placidly. The momentary silence was broken by Daisuke.
"You…!" He yelled it almost as a roar. The victims of this monster, this devil, had flashed through his head, and this latest outrage – what would soon be the killing of the ally who had helped his friends escape – filled him with an almost irresistible urge to launch himself upon the wearer of that mocking smile. He might have really done it, but a swift motion of Anubimon's arm checked him.
"I have no regrets now," Anubimon said. His upraised arm was trembling, but his voice was steady. "I am only sorry that it is not possible to do more."
"But have you really accomplished anything at all?" the Dark Man asked, his tone thoughtful.
"I must believe so," Anubimon answered. His uplifted hand pointed, past the Chosen Children and down the corridor. "Go, Chosen Children!"
"But—!" The word leapt to the lips of more than one of them.
"Go!" Anubimon repeated, and in that commanding voice the authority of his divine heritage could be heard. "They are waiting for you."
Startled, the Chosen Children twisted about to look down the hall. A white light shone in the distance. As they watched, it condensed into a number of rounded shapes. Then the glow faded and the objects were left all but invisible in the darkness.
"Can it…?" Takeru whispered.
"Digitama!" Ken breathed. Though at a distance from the group, Sato heard the exclamation, and bared his teeth in a snarl.
"Go," Anubimon said. "And thank you, for allowing me to, in a measure, redeem myself."
Finally they went, though with many a regretful glance thrown back over their shoulders. Anubimon watched for a moment, then rose unsteadily to his feet and turned to face the Dark Man. The latter hadn't moved.
"I had a feeling you had another little trick up your sleeve," the Dark Man said. "But I doubt it matters much. At any rate, it looks like I was right about your never leaving this world. The irony of it is rather—"
"I see no irony," Anubimon interrupted. "When I allowed you to use me, my sentence was passed. It would seem," he said, glancing at Sato, "that fate is just."
"Kill him," Sato said.
The Dark Man smiled slightly, raised his hands, and sent through Anubimon's center a beam of shining black.
As his body dissolved, Anubimon fell backward, sinking into what seemed like sleep. His eyes were closed, and about his mouth there was the slightest hint of a smile. Goodbye, Chosen Children, he thought. I have faith in you.
For several minutes Demon tried in vain to throw off or extinguish the burning blue gas that seemed determined to consume him. Regardless of his speed or his height above the plateau, it pursued him with mute, dogged persistence. He neither knew nor cared about its true nature, but if the situation continued long he would sustain significant damage.
His fury grew by leaps and bounds. The protracted fight with "Pharaohmon" had whittled away at his patience, and the current painful ordeal had exhausted it. Rents had begun to appear in the fabric of his robes. It was time to end this farce and take what he had come for.
Grasping his robe with one clawed hand, he tore the entire garment from his body in a single motion, scattering the beads of his necklace in the process. His shoes were likewise shredded as his feet appeared, scaly and taloned like his hands. At the same moment, a hole of purple shadow opened in the air beneath him, and, leaving his discarded garments to the devouring fire, he plunged into it. The blue fire, its volume somewhat diminished, rushed in after him.
For a second or two Demon was falling still through the purple interstices of space. With a flap of his mighty wings he shot onward, and the next moment emerged again into the gray twilight of the Dark World. Just behind him the gate through which he had come was closing on the last of the Troopmon's weaponized essence.
Demon brought himself to a halt and hovered a moment over the monastery. With the robes gone, his figure stood revealed, and it was not a pleasant sight. The rest of the body matched the demon lord's wings and horns, with thick fur, spikes of bone, and a mouth of pointed fangs. The blue eyes burned as they always had, but their gaze was augmented by what might have been a third eye, perfectly round, set above them. One of the hitherto symmetrical arms had lengthened, and the span of its hand's claws had nearly doubled.
"It's time to put an end to this," Demon said. He raised his hands high above his fearsome head. "Algol's Flame!"
Down he hurled it, a huge and perfect sphere of molten fire, igniting the air around it.
The Dark Man had begun to walk towards the exit the Chosen Children had taken, but to the consternation of the watching Sato suddenly stopped and looked up at the ceiling with a low, "Hm?"
"What are you—" Sato began, but the next moment his voice was lost in the noise of a tremendous crash and explosion from directly overhead.
Some distance down the corridor the Chosen Children had picked up the Digitama which seemed most likely to belong to their respective partners – Takeru and Ken recognized theirs immediately – when the cataclysm struck. The mixture of conflicting emotions that had been besetting them – joy at the restoration of their partner Digimon, grief and anger at the death of Anubimon, fear of possible pursuit – was immediately swept away by a flood of surprise and sudden terror.
For a few seconds all was utter confusion. A network of huge cracks had appeared in the roof of the monastery, and stone debris of all sizes rained from the ceiling. Where they were gathered the Chosen Children escaped the worst of it, but still sustained a few minor pains as the rubble showered them. Meanwhile the entire building shook. The very floor seemed to shift, as though its foundation had been shattered. Only by a miracle did the children manage to keep their hold on the precious eggs.
Far behind them the domed control room was breached at last. The big glowing screen went dark as it disintegrated, and massive chunks of masonry came crashing down. Sato Katsu cried out, but his voice was swallowed up in the noise. The ground tilted beneath him – it was not an illusion – and above him the ceiling began to fall in huge fragments…
Through it all, the Dark Man retained his composure, only frowning up at a gigantic hole in the ceiling, where an ominous figure loomed against the gray sky.
"I could sense that you were in there," Demon roared. "Your power is intriguing, but unless you surrender now I will wipe it from existence."
"I can't oblige," the Dark Man replied. Otherwise motionless, he began to rise into the air. "We've made it clear enough where we stand. There's no reason for either of us to waste any more time." The shadows that seemed always to cluster about him began to deepen and darken. He continued to rise, and as he did so his pitch black form began once more to change and grow.
All the while the Chosen Children were putting distance between themselves and the two dark gods. It was treacherous going. Incredibly, it seemed that Demon's attack had shattered not only the monastery but the ground upon which it stood. The building had been cut into a great number of large, irregular sections, some relatively stable, while others sank or rose or slanted bewilderingly. Many of the walls were broken, and the ceiling was in ruins, so that vast portions of the floor lay exposed to the sky.
The group pressed on. Whatever they were feeling in their hearts, they all knew that their lives and perhaps more depended on their getting clear of the monastery, and quickly. The Digitama they shielded from damage as best they could, but it was fortunate that the shells were naturally tough. Often one of the children would stumble, tripping over rubble, losing their balance, or succumbing to weakness. They were at their limit – alone, each of them could never have made it, but when one of them sank to the unsteady ground there was always a hand to help them get back up, and a voice to urge them on.
Meanwhile, an enormous shape of darkness faced Demon in the sky. Vast wings spread out from a nightmare body like that of a centaur, with four stout legs and two arms bearing long triple pincers. A horned head rose to surmount the figure. From the blackness colors and features began to emerge. The mouth in the gray, hairless head grinned with pointed teeth, but worse was the horribly human second mouth set into the hairy body just above the monster's forelegs. It was also grinning.
"Gulfmon!"
"Finally you look like a worthy opponent," Demon said. His fangs set into something between a snarl and a grin.
"Well, it is not every day one sees Demon's true form," the other replied. Except for its great volume, his voice was the same as ever. "I felt obliged to change into something more formal."
"Ha!" Demon's laugh was short and harsh. "Die!"
With a sweep of his enormous left hand he hurled a sphere of blazing fire at his enemy. Gulfmon's pincer hands came up in a defensive position, and flame scattered in all directions, leaving parts of the Dark One's huge body burning. Immediately Demon summoned another flaming projectile. This one the Dark One did not attempt to block. Instead, Gulfmon's nether mouth gaped wide, and from the pitch black hole issued screams in a thousand voices, like the shrieking of the damned. The power of the sound was such that it sent visible waves through the air, and in the onslaught the ball of fire slowed and began to shrink, smothered.
The sound died away as Demon's attack vanished. The voices within the Maw began to laugh. With a roar, Demon threw himself upon the Dark One, and raised clenched fists above his head. Glowing blue with power, the fists came down with the force of a meteor.
The impact was like a detonation. The diameter of the resulting shockwave rivaled that of the monastery. Gulfmon plummeted. He landed on his four feet, sending rubble flying in all directions. In the meantime Demon had rebounded, and now stood in the air facing his opponent with wings and arms outspread in menace, glowing blue and encircled by wisps of flame. But before he could launch another attack the Dark One spoke.
"Black Requiem!"
Once again Gulfmon's lower maw opened, and a new voice emerged, musical, deep and solemn. With it came a massive orb of purple energy aimed up at Demon. His attempt to dodge the huge attack ended in failure when it exploded in the air. For a moment the gray sky over the plateau became a smoky purple. Large chunks of the ruined monastery disintegrated into data. Gulfmon leapt into the air, hovering at the height where its eyes were on a level with Demon's three orbs of blazing blue.
Below them much of the monastery and even the solid ground beneath it had vanished. Where the center of the building had been there was mostly just empty space, though a few large islands of rubble-strewn ground still remained suspended in midair. And in the abyss, slowly rotating, a gigantic whirlpool of darkness could now be seen.
Demon did not notice. His body was battered but not heavily damaged, and his gaze was fixed on the enemy with a deadly intensity.